Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. After Wu's death, Zhongzong reigned but only in name; real power was held by Lady Wei who used Wu Zetian as a role model to manipulate her husband and the court. Her name was Wu Zetian, and in the seventh century A.D. she became the only woman in more than 3,000 years of Chinese history to rule in her own right. 3rd Series. Traders from the Mediterranean and Persia also came from both the overland and maritime trade routes, where Buddhism and Central Asian culture, dress, and music reached China. 2019Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. Submitted by Emily Mark, published on 17 March 2016. Even today, Wu remains infamous for the spectacularly ruthless way in which she supposedly disposed of Gaozongs first wife, the empress Wang, and a senior and more favored consort known as the Pure Concubine. Although modern historians, both east and west, have revised the ancient depiction of Wu Zetian as a scheming usurper, that view of her reign still persists in much that is written about her. Sima, Guang. After the latter died in 684, she took on four or five lovers, including a monk whom she ordered executed when weary of his greed and abuse of power. Empress Wu Zetian and the Spread of Buddhism Agricultural production under Wu's reign increased to an all-time high. Her last name, "Wu" is associated with the words for 'weapon' and 'military force' and she chose the name 'Zeitan' which means 'Ruler of the Heavens'. Wu also took back lands which had been invaded by the Goturks under the reign of Taizong and distributed them so that they were not all held by the aristocrats. The story of Wu's murder of her daughter and the framing of Lady Wang to gain power is the most infamous and most often repeated incident of her life but actually there is no way of knowing if it happened as the historians recorded it. 23 Feb. 2023 . One reason, as we have already had cause to note in this blog, is the official nature and lack of diversity among the sources that survive for early Chinese history; another is that imperial history was written to provide lessons for future rulers, and as such tended to be weighted heavily against usurpers (which Wu was) and anyone who offended the Confucian sensibilities of the scholars who labored over them (which Wu did simply by being a woman). At the age of fourteen, she was selected as a palace maid to Gaozong, then a Prince, and his first spouse and primary consort Xing, who had recently married. Replacing the dynasty and imperial house through Confucian ideology still could not legitimize a woman on the throne. At a nunnery she established, Empress Komyo sponsored the creation of a statue of the Bodhisattva Kannon which, like Wu Zetians statue at Longmen, was felt to be done in her likeness. Having been raised by her father to believe she was the equal of men, Wu saw no reason why women could not carry out the same practices and hold the same positions men could. The remaining Li-Tang family who survived the murders, including Wu Zetian's own son on whose behalf she was serving as empress dowager, begged to take the surname of Wu to replace their birth surnames of Li. The empress responded with both diplomacy and force, concluding a marriage alliance with the Turks and defeating the Qidan in battle. . Territorial Expansion. Chapter 2 SOURCES FOR THE LIFE AND CAREER OF WU TSE-T'IEN The chief primary sources for the life of the Empress Wu are her annals in the two dynastic histories of the T'ang, her biography in the New T'ang History, and the numerous references to her in Ssu-ma Kuang's Comprehensive Mirror.^ In some of the large official compilations of later ages, For example, at the statues eye opening ceremony which dedicated the monument, the ruler was ritualistically seen to have been given the right to rule through the divine mandate of the Buddha icon. And while Chinas imperial chronicles were too rigidly run and too highly developed for Wus name to be simply wiped from their pages, the stern disapproval of the Confucian mandarins who compiled the records can still be read 1,500 years later. Wu also learned to play music, write poetry, and speak well in public. Throughout 15 dismal years in exile, her sons consort had talked him out of committing suicide and kept him ready to return to power. World History Encyclopedia. Wu either read him whatever she felt like and then made her own decisions or read him the real reports and then still acted on her own. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. Historian Kelly Carlton writes: Wu had a petition box made, which originally contained four slots: one for men to recommend themselves as officials; one where citizens might openly and anonymously criticize court decisions; one to report the supernatural, strange omens, and secret plots, and one to file accusations and grievances. How to evaluate such an unprecedented figure today? At one point, to the horror of her generals, Wu proposed raising a military corps from among Chinas numerous eunuchs. Last modified March 17, 2016. In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Liu, Xu. "The Real Judge Dee: Ti Jen-chieh and the T'ang Restoration of 705," in Asia Major. "Wu Zetian (624705) To justify her rule, Wu used selected Buddhist scriptures and led the way in the creation of numerous visual representations of the Buddha. Thus the Wu family was now elevated to the imperial house. According to almost all her biographers, she was extremely cruel in her personal life, murdering two sons, a daughter, sister, niece, grandchildren, and many Li and Wu princes and princesses who opposed her. Ruizong was also a disappointment to her and so she forced him to abdicate in 690 CE and proclaimed herself Emperor Zeitan, ruler of China, the first and only woman to sit on the Dragon Throne and reign in her own name and by her own authority. $1.99. Carlton further notes, "While ostensibly for her great concern over the condition of her people, the box mainly served the purpose of obtaining information on seditious subjects (3)." World History Foundation is a non-profit organization registered in Canada. Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Our publication has been reviewed for educational use by Common Sense Education, Internet Scout (University of Wisconsin), Merlot (California State University), OER Commons and the School Library Journal. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975. Lyn Reese is the author of all the information on this website Quin Shi Huang-Di Her experience reflected a reversal of the gender roles and restrictions her society and government constructed for her as appropriate to women. The World History Encyclopedia logo is a registered trademark. Her mother ne Yang was of aristocratic birth with mixed Chinese and Turkic blood, the result of generations of intermarriage when five nomadic tribes overran north China and founded dynasties in the 4th to 6th centuries. These began in 666 with the death by poison of a teenage niece who had attracted Gaozongs admiring gaze, and continued in 674 with the suspicious demise of Wus able eldest son, crown prince Li Hong, and the discovery of several hundred suits of armor in the stables of a second son, who was promptly demoted to the rank of commoner on suspicion of treason. The horrible deaths of empress Wang and the Pure Concubine, for example, are nowhere mentioned in Luo Binwangs fearless contemporary denunciation, which suggests that Wu was not blamed for them during her lifetime. World Eras. With a heart like a serpent and a nature like that of a wolf, one contemporary summed up, she favored evil sycophants and destroyed good and loyal officials. A small sampling of the empresss other crimes followed: She killed her sister, butchered her elder brothers, murdered the ruler, poisoned her mother. She founded a secret police and conducted a reign of terror, justifying the mass executions on the grounds that discrimination against a womans open exercise of power forced her to use terror to defend her authority. They came to power, mostly, by default or stealth; a king had no sons, or an intelligent queen usurped the powers of her useless husband. China during Wu Zetian's ReignIan Kiu (CC BY-SA). Gaozong's wife, Lady Wang, and his former first concubine, Xiao Shufei, were jealous of each other but even more envious of the attention Gaozong paid to Wu. Wu Zhao: Ruler of Tang Dynasty China - Association for Asian Studies Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/Wu_Zetian/. Encyclopedias almanacs transcripts and maps, Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. The Empress Wu Zetian (690-704 CE) is the only female ruler in the history of China. Leiden: EJ Brill, 1974. In preparing for the legitimacy of her emperorship, she claimed the Zhou Dynasty (1045256 bce) and its founders among her own ancestors. Rise to Power. Long a supporter of Buddhism through her mother's devotion and her own refuge in the nunnery after her first husband Taizong's death, Wu Zetian counted on Buddhist ideology to legitimize her reign and her dynasty. Wu is said to have potentially killed her own. It was Lu Zhi who, in 194 B.C., wreaked revenge on a rival by gouging out her eyes, amputating her arms and legs, and forcing her to drink acid that destroyed her vocal chords. Our mission is to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide. Wu Zetian's father was a successful merchant and military official who reached ministerial ranks. Chu Hsi (1130-1200) was one of the greatest Chinese scholars and philosophers. Neither of these boys was a threat to Lady Wang or Lady Xiao because Gaozong had already chosen a successor; his chancellor Liu Shi was Lady Wang's uncle, and Gaozong appointed Liu Shi's son, Li Zhong, as heir. Wu Zhao: China's Only Woman Emperor - World History Encyclopedia In her seventies, Wu showered special favor on two smooth-cheeked brothers, the Zhang brothers, former boy singers, the nature of whose private relationship with their imperial mistress has never been precisely determined. . Kumarajiva's influence on Chinese Buddhist thought was crucial. Cite This Work Reign of Terror. Empress Dowager. She ordered the executions of several hundred of these aristocrats and of many members of the imperial family of Li. Wu Zetian argued that since mothers were indispensable to the birth and nourishment of infants, the three years when the infant totally depended on the mother as caregiver should be requited with three years of mourning her death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Twitchett, Denis, and Howard J. Wechsler. Her daunting task was convincing the Confucian establishment about the legitimate succession of a woman who was the widow of the deceased emperor and the mother of the currently legitimate ruler. Traditionally, only the emperor, as the son-of-heaven, could communicate with heaven and carry out sacrifices to heaven and earth. The area around Changan could not produce the amount of food required to feed the court and garri-sons, and the transportation of grain up the Yellow River, traversing the Sanmen rapids, was exceptionally expensive. These ready-to-use worksheets are perfect for teaching kids about Empress Wu, the first and only female emperor of Imperial China. Vol. But is the empress unfairly maligned? Empress Wu is the only female to have ever ruled in her own name in China. We care about our planet! It may be helpful to consider that there were in effect two empressesthe one who maintained a reign of terror over the innermost circle of government, and the one who ruled more benignly over 50 million Chinese commoners. 21/11/2022. Her last two lovers were the young and handsome Zhang brothers who put on makeup and exploited the relationship by obtaining offices, honors, and gifts for themselves and their family. According to Anderson, servants. Encyclopedia.com. Even though many at court congratulated her on being favored by the gods, many others did not. In 674 CE, Gaozong took the title Tian Huang (Emperor of Heaven) and Wu changed her own to Tian Hou (Empress of Heaven). Empress Lu Zhi (241-180 B.C.) RELIGION AS A PERCENTAGE OF WORLD POPULATION: 0.1 percent It is also generally accepted that Ruizongs wife, Empress Liu, and chief consort, Dou, were executed at Wus behest in 693 on trumped-up charges of witchcraft. 290332. Princess Taiping put an end to her plans when she had Wei and her family murdered and put her brother Ruizong on the throne. After his death, she married his son, Gaozong (r. 649-683 CE) and became empress consort but actually was the power behind the emperor. Hidden Power: The Palace Eunuchs of Imperial China. The Demonization of Empress Wu : r/history - reddit She was the daughter of a minor general called Duke Ding of Ying, and came to the palace as a concubine in about 636an honor that suggests that she was very beautiful, since, as Jonathan Clements remarks, admission to the ranks of palace concubines was equivalent to winning a beauty contest of the most gorgeous women in the medieval world. But mere beauty was not sufficient to elevate the poorly connected teenage Wu past the fifth rank of palace women, a menial position whose duties were those of a maid, not a temptress. Functioning in a male-oriented patriarchy, Wu Zetian was painstakingly aware of the gender taboos she had to break in political ideology and social norm. She replaced Zhongzong with her second son, who became Emperor Ruizong. Her significance as an emperor and founder of a new dynasty lies in her redefining of the gender-specific concepts of the emperorship and the Confucian state. 77116. World History Encyclopedia. Justinian. Empress Wu is one of the most controversial leaders in Chinese history for her method of rule and the means she likely used to rise to power. Emily Mark studied history and philosophy at Tianjin University, China and English at SUNY New Paltz, NY. Refer to each styles convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. When he fell out of favor, he burned the building to the ground. Political Propaganda and Ideology in China at the End of the Seventh Century. New Capital. Vol. We are told that through cruel manipulations, including strangulating her own infant daughter to falsely implicate Gaozong's then current barren empress, Wu Zetian replaced her as empress in 657 and dominated the rest of Gaozong's reign. https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/empress-wu-wu-zhao, "Empress Wu (Wu Zhao) Overall Wu Zetian was a decisive, capable ruler in the roles of empress, empress dowager, and emperor. First emperor of the Qin Dynasty, Quin Shi Huang-di (259 B.C.-210 B.C.) Thank you! Historians remain divided as to how far Wu benefited from the removal of these potential obstacles; what can be said is that her third son, who succeeded his father as Emperor Zhongzong in 684, lasted less than two months before being banished, at his mothers instigation, in favor of the more tractable fourth, Ruizong. Mike Dash is a contributing writer in history for Smithsonian.com. Empresas ICA Sociedad Controladora, S.A. de C.V. Empresa Brasileira de Aeronutica S.A. (Embraer), Emporia State University: Narrative Description, https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/empress-wu-wu-zhao. This mountain, so born of the sudden convulsion of earth, represents a calamity. Our latest articles delivered to your inbox, once a week: Our mission is to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide. With her exceptional intelligence, extraordinary competence in politics, and inordinate ambition, she ruled as the "Holy and Divine Emperor" of the Second Zhou Dynasty (690-705) for fifteen years. She not only created many different cultural and political policies, but she displayed what a women could do in government. Gaozong divorced his wife, barred her mother from the palace, and exiled Lady Xiao. ." Her one mistake had been to marry this boy to a concubine nearly as ruthless and ambitious as herself. She kept Ruizong under a kind of house arrest confining him to the Inner Palace. (2016, February 22). Ch'ien-lung (1711-1799) was the fourth emperor of the Ch'ing, or Manchu, dynasty in China. She contended with petitions against female dominance which argued that her unnatural position as emperor had caused several earthquakes to occur and reports being filed of hens turning into roosters. "Wu Zetian." She first entered the imperial harem at the age of 13 as a lowly ranked concubine to Emperor Taizong (r. 626649), who has been praised as the most capable ruler of the Tang period and hailed as the "heavenly khan" by Central Asian states. Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2007; Dora Shu-Fang Dien, Empress Wu Zetian in Fiction and in History: Female Defiance in Confucian China. It was used for religious rites supervised by her lover Xue Huaiyi. 2231). When Taizong died, Gaozong became emperor, and Wu Zetian joined a Buddhist nunnery, as required of concubines of deceased emperors. Empress Wu used the intelligence she gathered to pressure some high-ranking officials who were not performing well to resign; others she simply banished or had executed. World History Encyclopedia. The China that Wu Zetian was born in was the Tang Dynasty (618906), a strong and unified empire after four centuries of political discord and foreign interaction. In 652 CE, Wu gave birth to a son, Li Hong, and in 653 CE had another son, Li Xian. Her paranoia resulted in a purge of her administration. Hong Kong: Cosmos, 1994. Please support World History Encyclopedia. Wu Zetian established her dynasty - the Zhou dynasty. We care about our planet! Download Full Size Image. But several years later, she returned to the palace as Gaozong's concubine and gave birth to sons. The political success of Wu Zetian indicates that the attributes needed in diplomacy and rulership were not restricted to men. Thus Wu Zetian's experience might have caused some redefinition of gender in her time, but this direction has not translated into enduring gains in the society and political organization that she left behind. Her usurpation marked a significant social revolution, the rise of a new class, which the empress tried to use in her struggle against the traditionalist, northwest nobility. Favoring the power base in the Northeast, the royal family finally moved to Luoyang in 683. Numerous educational institutions recommend us, including Oxford University. However, despite establishing an autocratic and centralised state, Emperor Wu adopted the principles of Confucianism as the state philosophy and code of ethics for his empire and started a school to teach future administrators the Confucian classics. . One of the most powerful champions of Buddhism in China was the Empress Wu Zetian. She was also able to re-open the Silk Road, which had been closed because of the plague of 682 CE and later raids by nomads. When Gaozong suffered a stroke in 660, the empress made herself the ruler. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. Wu Zhao (624-705), also known as Empress Wu Zetian, was the first and only woman emperor of China. ." Modern popular novels and plays, in Chinese, Japanese, and English, also exaggerate the sexual aspect of her rule. Her reforms and policies lay the foundation for the success of Xuanzong as emperor under whose reign China became the most prosperous country in the world. Nationality/Culture To reinforce her legitimacy, Wu Zetian also invented about a dozen characters with a new script. Wu Zetian turned to the Buddhist establishment to rationalize her position. He refused to cooperate well with his mother and his wife, Lady Wei, assumed too much power. There was a sense of trying to keep up with ones rivals by building something bigger than they had. Her overall rule, in spite of the change of dynasty, did not result in a radical break from Tang domestic prosperity and foreign prestige. Missions from Japan, Korea, and Vietnam arrived at Xi'an bearing tribute and seeking education in Buddhism and Confucianism. Moreover, Wu exhibited one important characteristic that suggests that, whatever her faults, she was no despot: She acknowledged and often acted on the criticisms of loyal ministers, one of whom dared to suggest, in 701, that it was time for her to abdicate. Lu Zhi was an instantly recognizable villain to the people of China, and linking Wu with her through the murders worked to destroy Wu's reputation.